Free Sampler sites introduced - great way to start on the internet, or to build links

Sign up features outlined – summary of features available for you to use

New marketing reports for artists each month introduced

Leading the way with anti-copying at MyArtClub.Com

Bulletins on the latest scams and frauds

New group site functionality.

Artist and group sites expanded by 10 more images for free

MyArtClub.Com was delighted in February to announce that each basic site now comes with 20 image spaces, instead of just 10. Each artist, no matter how many art spaces you have currently, now has 10 more spaces absolutely free.

We have studied our traffic results closely and we found something perhaps obvious, but never the less very important! The more pages of art you have on your site, the higher your traffic level.

Think of it this way: if someone is looking through your images, the more you have to show them, the more they are likely to click on and see each visit. This means longer visits on your site, more exposure for you, more listings in search engines, more content online. We want you to have all these advantages, right now.

Early traffic analysis looks like this is working well. Since launching this in February the overall traffic in the last month appears to have more than doubled! We'll have more on this in our next newsletter.

Please take advantage of this free expansion as soon as you can.

Free "Sampler sites" introduced - great way to start on the internet, or to build links

MyArtClub.Com announced in February a new 'sampler' free 3 image website. That's right, absolutely free, we now offer interested new artists a free mini-website.

This free website has two main uses: Free trial for new users and as a link exchange service. Here's more:

First, this sampler website lets an artist see what it's like to be on the internet with MyArtClub.Com. Using this service any artist who may be wondering about how well our site works can give it a try for free. They can see just how easy it is to load up the site and perhaps one day may want to try a full site to enjoy our full suite of features.

Second, artists with websites can boost our mutual internet traffic by using the sampler site as a link exchange. With MyArtClub.Com, artists get much more than a basic link found on other sites. Our site offers 3 full art pages, descriptions, and entry to our 'Find Art', and 'Find Artist' databases. Compared with the basic link approach used everywhere, our offer can't be beat!

For you this means more artists, in more communities inviting more visitors, which means more traffic and exposure for all. Please spread the word, with our thanks.

(Pssst – Techie tip!!) – Want to create a live link from one of your pages? Here is the html code format you can adapt to link to any site you want. You must enter where text normally goes on your site. Use the format of quotation marks, brackets, spaces etc. exactly: Click here to see our free site

Sign up features outlined – summary of features available for you to use

MyArtClub.Com continues to innovate to provide you with new features. To know what features are available and to understand the details for each feature, we have added a list of our features and full description of what each feature means.

The full list of features is available from the "Members" sign on page. Click on the left column link "Become a Member", or come to us at: https://www.myartclub.com/member/member.php?RED=login_m

On the comparison chart page, all the features listed on the left column are linked to a description. Just click on the feature of interest, and up pops a full outline of the feature you selected. If you want to know more about using any of these features, try our FAQ, or drop us a line, at webmaster@MyArtClub.Com

New marketing reports for artists each month introduced

MyArtClub.Com recently introduced a new report for our artists. Each artist is now sent a personal "Marketing Report" on a monthly basis, to help you track your status.

The report gives a snapshot of the past month's activities, showing a summary of account info, images loaded, number of hits during the month, when you last updated your art, and marketing features used. A copy of the current report is also stored on line available to you from your main menu webpage after you log in, click on "Marketing Report".

This emailed report is your personal reminder to take advantage of the many features you can use to reach more customers, build traffic and enjoy your site. We hope you find this a help and would welcome your comments and suggestions.

Leading the way with anti-copying at MyArtClub.Com

MyArtClub.Com has taken several measures to counter the copying by unauthorized sites such as the Chinese website we reported on in late December.

As with any type of security measures, given enough effort, time and resources we know crooks will find a way. However MyArtClub.Com is now a leader among artist sites with our new practices.

We have added a new feature, which masks your art image. It is automatically added, no special effort by the artist is required. If you try to copy directly from the image, you get nothing.

In effect this new security feature makes it a very manual and tedious job to download images from you website, one by one. In other words your images can no longer be captured by any automated programs and copied into their website.

A trade off to all artists of being on the internet has been that images are available to view, and therefore copy. Some artists add a "watermark" like the word Copyright to their image file. This is some help, but its effectiveness is debatable. Disfiguring your image detracts from legitimate customers seeing your real artistic talent, taking away from the purpose for being on the internet in the first place. However you are free to do so if desired on MyArtClub.Com

Protection of art images on line has been built in from MyArtClub.Com's beginnings. The image files on MyArtClub.Com sites are kept small so that in printing them, they do not appear well at all. Instead they will look "pixely" or "jaggy". They look nice on computer screens, as the screens are only 72 dots per inch, whereas print copies typically range form 300 to 1200 dots per inch.

It has said that if you can see an image anywhere, you can copy it. Artists were always in this jeopardy, even before the internet. If your art is published in a book, or magazine, it is open to copying. Even hanging in a gallery or museum, the image can be photographed, or the promotional materials copied and at far higher quality. The internet poses less risk in terms of the quality of the image, and more risk in terms of spreading the image around quickly and cheaply.

In the end showing your art anywhere is a business decision: is the risk worth the advantage? We think showing art online with our new security features is worth the risk. Many artists today are embracing the internet, and using MyArtClub.Com more than ever. In the last month, we have seen 690 new works loaded on our site, and 150 new works in just the last week. Wow!

Bulletins on the latest scams and frauds

MyArtClub.Com now devotes a Bulletin page to keep our MyArtClub.Com artists up to date with the latest scams or frauds. This information page lists all of the scams or frauds that have come to our attention.

This Bulletin section is accessible via a link from either the front page of the MyArtClub.Com site, or from the Member sign-on page.

These links to the scams or fraud information also show the latest headline, so you can see at a glance whether the information has been updated since the last time you looked. If you haven't reviewed the date, it is worthwhile having a look through this section to see what evil lurks on the internet and what to watch out for.

If you become aware of any new frauds or are unsure whether an email or other offer you are receiving is "too good to be true", feel free to tell us about it. We can let you know whether we have heard of it before and if it is a new scam, we can publish it for other artists to avoid.

New group site functionality

Webmasters of our many group sites can now add even more options to the way in which they present their group websites. Thanks to suggestions and requests from our active group webmasters, we have modified the group templates to add the following functionality. You can now choose whether to:

display the linked artist web sites;

display the group gallery thumbnails in one, two, three or four columns;

display a coloured background panel for the gallery thumbnails;

display a different coloured background panel for the group information;

display the group information in a two column format; and

display the page as a bordered page within the browser.

Other changes to the group format display more information on the thumbnails, centre elements of the page and restrict the thumbnails, group logos or featured artist banner from expanding the page so you have to scroll back and forth to see the whole page.

As always, if you have suggestions for improvements to the site, we are interested in hearing from you, whether it is for an artist or group site. We are currently working on a series of improvements which we will be rolling out in the next few months so we may not be able to act on every suggestion right away. However, time permitting we aim to add new functionality and your suggestions help prioritize this development.

Thanks for reading – hope you enjoyed this update, look forward to seeing your latest art on the Internet!

Peter Newell and Cam Anderson,
MyArtClub.Com

Do you have any questions, comments or suggestions?
Please write to us at: Webmaster @MyArtClub.Com

P.S. Previous issues of this newsletter are available on the MyArtClub.Com under the Member's Help Section.